Inherent abilities in place of gear?

[Alzrius]

What's the objective here? Are you trying to have the benefits of the items without having any of the drawbacks of them? IOW, are you simply looking for game flavor text (has no actual game effect, it's just for flair, flavor and coolness) or are you trying to legitimately change the rules so that you are getting something and giving up less?

This is a false dilemma - there are more options than the two you presented. The OP could, for instance, be looking for a system that has the same amount of advantages and drawbacks as items do, but different kinds of advantages and drawbacks.

Elethiomel has the right of it here. I'm honestly not trying to mix-max gain some sort of advantage - I just want to create a character that's on equal footing with other characters (particularly in terms of offensive and defensive abilities) without having them be loaded down with magic items. In effect, I just want to move away from the "Christmas Tree" standard for 3.5 characters.

In terms of balance, I'm trying to find something that maintains game balance by using GP as a baseline in that regard. That is, I want a meta-game framework wherein inherent abilities are priced in terms of GP. I don't particularly care if inherent abilities have some innate advantages over wearing/using magic items or not, but even if they do, I'd prefer that the GP-pricing system simply reflect that in the cost lists.

As it is, I'm currently thinking that the material in Four Color to Fantasy would work best.

 

[RangerWickett]

Cool. But if you use FCTF, bear in mind that it was written, like, 5 years ago, before 3.5, I think, so some of the balance might be a _little_ off, with regard to the costs of powers.

 

[Alzrius]

Cool. But if you use FCTF, bear in mind that it was written, like, 5 years ago, before 3.5, I think, so some of the balance might be a _little_ off, with regard to the costs of powers.

I'd considered that, since I compared FCTF's Table 3-3 (covering the GP cost of Hero Points) to the PHB's listing of GP value for PCs by level, and the numbers were a bit wonky.

Still, it's the closest thing I've seen to what I'm looking for.